


One In the Same

by mdr_24601



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Annie Cresta-centric, Arena (Hunger Games), District 4 (Hunger Games), District 7 (Hunger Games), F/M, Finnick Odair-centric, Johanna Mason-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25431031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mdr_24601/pseuds/mdr_24601
Summary: Finnick, Annie, Johanna; the aftermath.Because you aren’t the same when the arena spits you back out.
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason & Finnick Odair
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	One In the Same

The trident hangs on his wall.

Finnick’s not sure why, really. Why he wanted it, asked for it back. It’s not customary for victors to keep their arena weapons, not when there are rich people ready to buy them. But exceptions can be made for Finnick Odair. He learns that early on.

The doctors had to pry his fingers off of the handle on the hovercraft. He wouldn’t let go, they told him later. Wouldn’t release the trident from his grasp, not with any amount of soothing words or pleas.

Mags eventually coaxed his fingers off later. Finnick doesn’t remember that part. 

“He’s young,” he can remember Mags saying once in an interview. “Fourteen. He’s a victor, but people need to remember that he’s a child, too.”

He doesn’t feel like a child. Not anymore. 

Nobody has ever won the Games at fourteen. Not before him. Possibly not for a long time after, either.

_You’re a novelty, Finnick. Special. Admired. The Capitol would love to have you back._

The President’s words echo in his mind for days after the meeting. He was pulled from the arena and hospitalized for only a few hours before he was declared fit to make a public appearance. Most victors wait days. Just another way he’s an exception. 

He does go back to the Capitol. For his Victory Tour, then later to mentor his first tributes. Finnick turns sixteen and is invited back more than ever.

So the trident hangs on his wall. People speculate why, as they always do. Does it hang there as a souvenir of a life changing experience? As a reminder of his strength and glory? Because he can’t bear to part with such a beautiful, deadly weapon? Finnick lets people assume what they want. 

But perhaps it hangs there because the doctors had to pry his hands away, because when he wakes up screaming he can’t stop his fingers from clenching around the handle. 

In the mornings, the sunlight glints off the golden prongs. The trident is one of the first things Finnick sees when he wakes up, and the last thing he sees when he falls asleep. Maybe that’s why he can’t stop dreaming of the arena. Maybe he should take it down.

His hand grasps the trident, ready to pull it from the wall. Finnick waits a breathless moment, willing his hand to move. After a second, he pulls away.

The trident hangs there for ten years.

* * *

Everything’s a threat.

Annie leaves the arena, and threats are everywhere.

She knows, intellectually, that she’s safe. She’s out of the arena, she beat the threat. She should feel relieved. Relaxed, even. Basking in her riches, her glory, her eternal comfort. 

But still, threats exist everywhere. It’s a butter knife on the kitchen table, waiting to slit her throat. A sudden loud noise, signaling another tribute death. The shadows that loom in her bedroom in the dark, pausing before they attack. 

It’s the ocean on a bad day, when she can hear the waves breaking on the shoreline, ready to drag her down into the depths of the chilling water. Annie hates that they took the ocean from her. Her safe haven, her comfort, has become something she can’t even be near without panicking.

She doesn’t hold anything that resembles a weapon anymore. Not a butter knife, or a fishing spear, or even knitting needles. Flashes of blood and screams and all encompassing pain run through her mind until she drops whatever object she was holding. 

Mags promises that it’ll get better. That soon, the terror will abate, and she can return to normal. Annie thinks that Mags would know by now, after being a victor for nearly sixty years. 

But she just wants to go back to what life was like before. 

“There’s no going back to before,” she remembers Mags telling her gently. “There is only now. How you live now is what matters.”

Annie’s not asked to go back to the Capitol. She’s too mad, too damaged. Nobody wants her. Maybe that’s a good thing. Annie’s not sure that she wants the Capitol, either.

So she stays at home, with the sea crashing in the distance, and tries not to think of the flood that almost swallowed her whole.

* * *

The people in Seven don’t look at her the same anymore. 

Johanna could hardly care less about how they look at her. She’s alive, isn’t that what matters? Who cares how she did it? She brought them a victory, and the packages of food and resources and attention that come with it. 

But no, she knows what they see when they look at her. They see the blood on her hands as her axe slices another tribute. The savage look in her eyes as she kills, again and again. She’s not like Annie Cresta, who won the year before without killing a single person. Any traces of the sentimental girl she’d been are gone. Johanna’s not sure what’s left in her place, but clearly, the people of her district don’t like what the arena spit back out.

It’s not like she’s really been a people person to begin with, but at least she had acquaintances. People only look at her and then glance away, stepping aside to avoid touching her on the street. As if whatever changed in her head during her time in the arena is somehow contagious, like they’ll suddenly go around killing five children if they stare at her too long.

It takes every ounce of self control not to scream when anyone does that. They’re ignorant, she reminds herself. They don’t know what the arena’s like. So those suspicious looks, the wary glances, the nudging away of small children when she passes; those things don’t matter much. Not really. At least, that’s what she tries to convince herself.

So Johanna locks herself in her house, and doesn’t open the door for anyone.

Nobody comes knocking, of course. Blight comes around occasionally, as her mentor, and sometimes she’ll open for him, but nobody else. 

Johanna splits wood in her backyard, using an axe. Not the one from the arena, because that got taken when she won, but it’s an axe. And the soreness in her upper body and back from the repetitive motions of swinging the axe is enough to distract her from what she doesn’t want to think about, so she welcomes the pain. It’s exhausting but mindless work.

At the very least, it’s enough to make her collapse in bed when she’s finished, falling asleep almost immediately. If she’s lucky, she can avoid the nightmares.

* * *

Finnick knows how to fight. It’s a given, of course. You don’t survive the arena without knowing how to fight. Not in Four, anyway, where tributes are trained. Not because they find glory and purpose in the Games, but because they don’t want to send helpless kids if they can send experienced fighters.

So combat is familiar. Fighting back is instinct. Survival is ingrained into him. 

Perhaps that’s why the trident still hangs on his wall, after all these years. 

Finnick is sixteen when he’s sold for the first time. He wants to fight, wants to do something—anything—to protect himself. But he can only smile as he goes against his instincts, ignoring the uneasiness creeping up his spine, settling like lead in his stomach. He imagines spearing his clients with his trident, watching the life drain from their eyes. Finnick wants to throw up at the twisted excitement the thought brings him. He’s not violent, he tries to convince himself. 

Only he is. He’s a victor, after all. How else could he survive the arena, if not violence?

He’s nineteen when he meets Annie Cresta. She’s fresh out of the arena. Jumpy, nervous, terrified of her own shadow. He’s not sure they’ll get along. She’s clearly not a fighter, having won her Games by surviving a flood. Fitting for District Four, he supposes. 

But by the time she smiles sweetly at him, handing him a muffin that she’d baked herself, Finnick feels that he may have been wrong about her.

“It’s my victors’ talent,” she explains with a slight smile pulling at the corners of her lips. 

The muffin is sweet but nothing is sweeter than Annie’s smile, and he wonders how he lived without it for so long.

* * *

Of all of the things that Annie considers threatening, Finnick Odair is not one of them. He wasn’t there for her Games. They don’t even meet until he stops by her house one morning shortly after her arrival home.

“You must be Annie Cresta,” he says as he gives her a smile that is probably supposed to be charming. “I’m Finnick Odair.”

“Hello,” she replies carefully. “Would you like to come in?”

He does, glancing around her new home with a sort of polite curiosity. “Did you know,” he begins, “that you can tell a lot about a person based on how they decorate their home?”

“Oh?” Annie prompts for more, because she’s not sure where he’s going with this.

“Yeah.” Finnick gazes at the potted plants sitting on her windowsill. “You keep plants? Is gardening your talent?”

“No, it’s baking, actually.”

He raises an inquisitive eyebrow. “Baking? What’s your favorite thing to make?”

She feels her face heat up, because it’s been so long since she’s had a real conversation with someone other than Mags, and Annie’s worried that she may have forgotten how to speak entirely. “I like making muffins,” she says softly.

Finnick gives her a smile that must make some women weak in the knees. “Really? Well, Annie Cresta, I just so happen to love muffins.”

“Come over tomorrow morning, and I’ll make you some,” Annie hears herself say, unsure where this sudden desire for social interaction was coming from.

“That sounds perfect. Until tomorrow.” He gives her one last wave and smiles before leaving the way he came in.

When Finnick arrives the next morning, Annie is waiting for him, with a fresh batch of muffins. She prepares some things to help make conversation, too, but they end up being unnecessary.

Turns out, Finnick is quite easy to converse with.

And when he invites her to go for a swim in the ocean, Annie disregards the terror of the flood as the waves pull her under, and says, “Sure.”

Finnick gives her a brilliant, genuine smile, and Annie figures that maybe the water isn’t so scary. Not if Finnick is there to accompany her.

* * *

Johanna goes back to mentor the year after she wins. The people in Seven don’t talk to her, but the other victors might. 

Luckily for her, she doesn’t have to wait long. Finnick Odair, District Four victor and the Capitol’s golden boy, talks to her first. She’s sitting at her mentor console, waiting for the screen to flicker to life. Finnick comes up and leans on her desk. 

“Johanna Mason,” he greets with an annoyingly bright smile.

“Finnick Odair,” she responds, considerably less bright. “What do you want?”

“I’m just here to wish you a happy Hunger Games,” he says with another smile, and Johanna begins to wonder if he’s actually happy to be here at all. “It’s your first year mentoring, after all. We just wanted to see how you’re handling it so far.”

“We?” 

“The other victors,” Finnick clarifies. 

Johanna rolls her eyes. “Well, I’m doing fine. And you can tell all your friends that.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m glad to hear it. Mentoring is tricky business. Just call if you need any help, alright?”

She feels frustration build in her chest and she’s not really sure why. “Aren’t you supposed to be focusing on your own district?”

Finnick gives her a different kind of smile, slightly sad. “Possibly. But who do we have if we don’t have each other?”

Johanna feels her breath hitch in her throat. She’s not sure what to say about his sudden display of sincerity, so she settles on, “Fine, Odair. If I need any help watching my tributes die, you’ll be the first to know. Happy?”

He steps away from her desk. “Ecstatic,” he responds. 

Johanna watches him walk away, until the Games countdown begins and the screen requires her attention.

* * *

Finnick can’t shake the feeling that he doesn’t belong anywhere.

Not in District Four, where the people think he’s loyal to the Capitol. Not in the Capitol, because everything there is fake, anyway. He doesn’t belong in the arena, with his trident slick with blood. He doesn’t even belong in his own home in Victors’ Village, all big and empty and mostly bare of personal items.

On his bad days, he feels out of place no matter where he goes. 

On his good days, though, he knows exactly where he belongs. He belongs in Annie’s arms, watching her smile as they swim together. He belongs in Mentors’ Central with Johanna, laughing over some stupid joke, surrounded by people who understand him. 

They’re not all the same, he thinks, but they have one crucial thing in common. And perhaps it’s enough to tie all the victors together, in a way. They’re knotted together whether they like it or not. Finnick doesn’t mind. He doesn’t think the others mind, either.

The trident doesn’t leave his wall. He doesn’t bother taking it down after all this time. He sleeps with Annie in her house, anyway, so there’s really no need.

Most of the time, Finnick forgets that the trident is even there at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I probably write way too much of these three but I love them and want to write them so I think that’s reason enough to continue. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for reading.


End file.
